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The Musical Dispute

The Musical Discussion of the Composer

While the musical discussion between our feeling and our understanding advances the process of finding truth and thus, in the process of gaining knowledge in music, systematically puts us into the position of a creator of music, the “dispute” is now the climax of this development.

This “dispute” is the very logical result of the musical path of knowledge taken up in the discussion.

The Perfect Dispute between Unity and Diversity

The term “dispute” is commonly associated with some kind of negative discussion.
Here, however, the term “dispute” only denies the exclusive existence of unity within the harmony – unity to the exclusion of everything else, something our understanding tried to avoid in its relative process of knowing because it appeared too simple to him, not diverse enough.

The Understanding under the All-Nourishing Influence of Pure Self-Awareness

No sooner had our understanding reached the height of the harmony, and no sooner was it inundated there with the qualities of pure self-awareness, than it realized that here, in the field of the harmony, it was suddenly and unexpectedly on a completely new level of supreme musical knowledge.

The Understanding Perceives Diversity within Unity

And at the bright height of its total cognitive ability, our understanding now realized that, when examined very closely, the unity of the harmony completely unexpectedly revealed an infinite multiplicity to him.

From the state of relative waking-consciousness the understanding would never have expected this wealth.

Because during the musical process of knowing – as seen from the understanding – simplicity had only increased, while consequently the diversity had continually become less and less distinct.

Intellectual Musical Errors due to Lack of Enlivenment

However, with this assumption in the relative musical cognitive process, our understanding was in error owing to a lack of its own inner enlivenment.

Due to its inertia, it had not enough sensitivity to perceive diversity in the spaces of a higher musical order with the same distinction as in the spaces of a lower musical order.

Intellectual Ignorance of the Diversity in the Motif-Space

In the motif-space, for example, the understanding no longer perceived the manifold tones which it had so clearly recognized in the musical tone-space: because tonal multiplicity adheres to the motifs only as much as, for example, the fat of a ball of butter sticks to the hand after the butter has been thrown away – while the ball is far away, travelling the course that is determined by the hand.